Monday, October 12, 2015

Blog Tour Guest Post: How Does Alice in No Man's Land Compare and Contrast to the Original Wonderland

We are so excited to be a part of the blog tour for James Knapp's newest YA novel, ALICE IN NO-MAN'S-LAND!

ALICE IN NO-MAN'S-LANDis a Young Adult, Alice in Wonderland, Sci-fi re-imagining that is just in time for the 150th Anniversary.

Make sure to click one of the buy links below to grab your copy, and make sure to enter the giveaway at the bottom!

About ALICE IN NO-MAN'S-LAND:

When her escape pod falls to earth, crashing in Ypsilanti Bloc, privileged seventeen-year-old Alice Walshe is dashed from the wonderland of wealth and prosperity into a ruined, walled city overrun with militias, gangs, and even cannibals. On top of this horror, her younger brother’s escape pod is missing.

Alice isn’t naïve – she’s always known blocs like Ypsilanti exist, left behind after a foodborne illness ravished the country decades earlier and left pockets of severe urban decay in its wake. Men like her father - a major player at Cerulean Holdings - renew the devastated blocs and bring stability back into the areas. But, Ypsilanti is even worse than the tales she’s heard, and rumor has it the bloc is faced with the threat of extermination by Cerulean, not renewal.

Trapped within Ypsilanti’s borders and left for dead, Alice teams up with a pair of teen scavengers who tracked the wreck of her pod. Despite their rough exterior and vulgar speech, they’re her only option for navigating the hostile and violent environment of Ypsilanti, finding her brother, and getting out of No-Man’s-Land alive.

Guest Post

There were certain things I knew right off I wanted to do differently than the
original Alice - I wanted to move the story out of the realm of magic/fantasy
and into purely speculative fiction, and in keeping with that I knew I didn't
want to use actual animals (even anthropomorphic ones) as characters. I also,
with the exception of Alice herself, didn't want to use the original character
names since in this world it doesn't make sense to have a Mad Hatter, March
Hare, etc. I did all this understanding
that purists may hate it on principle (fewer tea cups, more cannibals), but
this is a much more subtle retelling viewed through the lens of modern times
which I hope readers will both appreciate and enjoy.

That said, while perhaps many of the more recognizable aspects like the giant
blue hookah-smoking caterpillar may not be present (he's a blue shirt wearing,
cigarette smoking boy in this version), many of the themes of the original are.
The original Alice had some things to say about society of that time, and my
version is no different in that regard. I wanted my Alice to start the story as
a good example of a young woman living in her world (like the original); Alice
Walshe is smart, and ambitious, but she's also well-mannered, and polite. She knows
where her path will lead her in life and at this point she's more than happy
with it. That said, she has a subversive streak - she's a model citizen and
daughter, but she's not a clone of her powerful father. She has her own
identity and ideas, both of which serve her well in this story's Wonderland.
When she first arrives, like the original Alice she is lost both in the literal
sense, but also the sense of an emerging identity crisis as she's flooded with
new information which force her to alter her world view (in the interest of
survival if nothing else). She finds herself in a strange new 'wonderland'
where the food and drink, as well as the dialects and customs of the natives,
are very different from what she knows and she has to do her best to adjust on
the fly. Like the original Wonderland, Alice can't help but be changed by her
experiences there.

The last theme, and one of the more important ones in this version, is the idea
of justice. It was held up to some mockery in the original, and the same holds
true here just with a slightly different twist. What constitutes justice in
this world is not some kind of universal (or even country-wide) constant. In
this world, what is 'just' depends very much on what side of the wall, or
rabbit hole, you happen to live on. As in the original, Alice is her own woman
- it's just that in this version instead of dealing with cryptic caterpillars
and head-choppy Queens, she's dealing with cryptic Bloc denizens and
head-choppy militia leaders (as well as the occasional head-eatey cannibal).
It's more serious and violent, for sure. The inhabitants of this Wonderland
don't just confuse and frustrate Alice, her life is threatened at every turn.
This is a world where alliances aren't forged easily, and death is a fact of everyday
life. In order to survive Alice is forced to either step up to the plate or
die, losing her little brother as well in the process.

All of this leads to the question of 'what made me want to write this in the
first place?' The answer for that is simple - at this point in my life I've
lived on both sides of 'the wall' or 'the rabbit hole', and so the
juxtaposition of it is real to me. I've never been as poor as the people of the
bloc in the story, nor have I ever been as wealthy as Alice's family, but you
don't have to exist at either extreme to see just how different life is when
you have enough money and opportunities to live a life that is at least stable,
and when you don't. It's not even really a political thing, it's a money thing
- either you have the resources to live comfortably in society or you don't. In
either situation, it doesn't take long for people to begin looking at the other
side and forming opinions about them and their choices, fair or not. It's so
easy to begin demonizing the 'other side', and you can see it playing out in
reality even today. In these types of situations, either side will find itself
willing to fight (for either change, or the status quo). Alice just happens to
straddle both sides as she fights to save her own life, that of her little
brother, and, along the way, some people who are a lot more like her than she
may have thought before walking a literal mile in their shoes.

Excerpt:

A man stepped through the door and closed it behind him.
He was bald, like the others, and had the puffy eagle brand scar on one side of
his neck, and another scar on the other side that appeared to be a heart with a
knife in it. He had several other scars, thin nicks that formed patterns along
his jawline. His eyes were dark brown, and his skin was bronzed and wind-burnt.
He wore a khaki uniform like the others, with the signature knife strapped to
his chest. He had the red arm band on his left arm, and a flag patch on his
right, white with a single red stripe through it. Stamped over the middle of
the stripe was a stylized eagle. A pistol hung from his hip in a black holster.

He stepped around the desk and held out his hand to me. He
was a shorter man, but broad with plenty of muscle. He had a hand like a
shovel, thick skinned and callused. I took it and gave it a shake.

"My name is Rob Utterback," he said. "I
know who you are, so don't bother lying about it."

"Alice Walshe," I said.

“Very good. Do you know who I am?”

"The leader of this place?"

He smiled, just a little, and glanced at the woman.

"We've met, of course," he said, and then looked
back at me. "The traitor here's name is Evelyn Cole."

"You’re calling me
a traitor?" she muttered.

"You spent a year warming up to us, and to me, and
then you betrayed me on every level. Yeah, I’m calling you that."

"You killed my father," I said. That got his
attention. Some of the anger that had been beginning to brew inside of him
faded, and he sighed. His expression carried what seemed to be genuine regret.

"I'm sorry kid," he said, his voice softer, and
more sincere. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this."

"Sorry I got dragged into this?"

"Yes," he said. "None of this is your
fault."

"Then whose fault is it?" I asked.

"Whose fault?" he asked.

"If not mine, then whose?"

"Look around, kid," he said. "Whose fault?
This all started long before now. There's plenty of blame to go around, but
don't blame me for your father's death."

"Why not? You killed him."

My lip quivered for just a second before I stopped it, and
I hoped he wouldn't notice. He didn't seem to, as he leaned over the table
toward me.

"He killed himself, the second he came in here,"
he said.

About James Knapp:

James Knapp was born in New Hampshire in 1970, and has lived in the New England area since that time. He developed a love of reading and writing early on, participating in young author competitions as early as grade school, but the later discovery of works by Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov turned that love to an obsession.

He wrote continuously through high school, college and beyond, eventually breaking into the field with the publication of the Revivors trilogy (State of Decay, The Silent Army, and Element Zero). State of Decay was a Philip K. Dick award nominee, and won the 2010 Compton Crook Award. Ember, The Burn Zone, and Fallout were all written under the name James K. Decker.

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According to the FTC, I must point out that all the books reviewed on my blog were; purchased by myself, borrowed from the library, won in a giveaway, or received from the author or publisher in exchange for an honest review. All reviews on books received from the author or publisher will be clearly stated, if not then they were purchased by me. I do not receive or accept compensation for writing reviews.